Meant to Live
by The.Adventures.Of.Me
Summary: Peter realizes that there's more to life than just being a nurse and struggles to find what his destiny truly is. Set throughout Season One. Petercentric. Songfic: Meant to Live by Switchfoot


**Title:** Meant to Live  
**Author:** The.Adventures.Of.Me  
**Summary:** Peter realizes that there's more to life than just being a nurse and struggles to find what his destiny truly is. Set throughout Season One. Petercentric

**Songfic:** "Meant to Live" by Switchfoot

**Author Comments:** Hi guys... This is my first Heroes fic and my second fic in total. Please be kind. I haven't written anything in over a year, and my writing wasn't that great even back then.

Anyways, I was listening to the radio and suddenly this song popped up out of nowhere, and it immediately reminded me of Peter. So hopefully, you'll like. It's kind of a Peter/Nathan thing, but no petrellicest. Just shows their relationship and conflicts.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing. Heroes, Peter, Nathan, Mohinder, Hiro, Isaac and whoever else is in there is owned by NBC and Tim Kring, along with the plot. The song "Meant to Live" is owned by Switchfoot.

* * *

**Meant to Live**

He was a hospice nurse and he liked his job. Really, he did. He loved the feeling he got when he helped his patients, how he gave them happiness in spite of the coming end. He enjoyed helping those near death, even though he always knew he would have to say goodbye. That was the type of person he was, caring, empathetic, always putting others before himself. He was just the person his patients needed when they hurting and scared, when they felt their time was coming. He knew how much they depended on people like him, and he was happy to be the one to help them.

But despite his love for his work, he had always felt that he was meant for more. Deep down, he could feel it. But he couldn't understand why. If he loved his job so much, why did he always feel like something was off? That something was missing, that he could be doing something more? He had chosen the job that he loved the most, but he wasn't sure if it was enough to make him happy.

Nathan had told him that he was being childish, and that he should grow up. There was no way that caring for dying patients would help the world, or his family, and there was no great destiny awaiting him. Nathan had tried to distract him, offering him a position is his campaign, but Peter refused. His brother only wanted to him to improve his image for the election. He never listened to Peter's concerns and dreams about life. No one did. No one understood his feelings that there was something else out there.

_Fumbling his confidence _

_And wondering why the world has passed him by_

"Let me ask you something, Mohinder. Do you ever... get the feeling that you were meant to do something extraordinary?"

"I'm driving a cab, you may have noticed."

"No, I'm not talking about what you do. I'm talking about who you are. I'm talking about... being special."

"Yes, we are all special."

"That's not what I meant."

He had been having these dreams, every time he closed his eyes. Dreams of him doing extraordinary things. Dreams of flying, precognition. Dreams of the supernatural. He knew that they meant something. He could feel it. Something was happening to him, and he was on the verge of something great. He had tried to talk to Nathan about it, and his mother, but they just scoffed at him. He needed to tell someone, someone who would explain to him what he was feeling. He had even resorted to talking with a cab driver about it. At first the man had joked, pretending to not understand, but eventually he had given Peter something worth thinking about.

"Some individuals, it is true, are more special. This is natural selection. It begins as a single individual born or hatched like every other member of their species. Anonymous. Seemingly ordinary. Except they're not. They carry inside them the genetic code that will take their species to the next evolutionary rung. It's destiny."

_Hoping that he's bent for more than arguments  
_

_And failed attempts to fly, fly_

He knew he wasn't crazy, no matter what Nathan said. He had hovered, just this morning. Just like in his dreams. It wasn't a hallucination. It was his destiny. He didn't know why or how, but he had been given this tremendous power. It wasn't something he could explain, it just was. He was certain. He was going to be somebody. All he had to do was show Nathan.

Peter was tired of standing in the shadows, always supporting Nathan while his brother continually tried to force him into a life of image and politics. Why couldn't his brother understand that he wanted to help people through kindness, rather than through political means? Finally, he had a way to show him that he wasn't wrong. He wasn't crazy, imagining the paranormal. It was his destiny calling.

"I've been up here all night thinking about this, thinking about my destiny."

"What are you doing, Pete?"

"It's my turn to be somebody now, Nathan!"

As he stepped off of the roof of the building, he could feel the excitement running through his veins, the adrenaline pumping. This was it, his time to show what he was made of. He was falling, falling, falling. The ground was rising up to meet him. Any moment now he would begin to fly. He could hear Nathan calling out to him, and he felt something knock him sideways, gripping him. Then he blacked out.

_We were meant to live for so much more  
_

_Have we lost ourselves?  
_

_Somewhere we live inside  
_

"Yeah, I thought I'd be the hero."

"Yeah. How'd that work out for ya?"

"Save the cheerleader, save the world."

"You're meant to do a lot of things, Peter. Saving the world isn't one of them. You gotta learn to recognize when life is bigger than you are. You're not a fighter but that's okay, the world needs nurses, too."

Nathan just didn't understand it. He wasn't just a nurse anymore. He had saved the cheerleader, with the help of Isaac and the two Japanese men. They all had powers and had saved the girl in the paintings. It proved everything that he had been trying to tell him. Their powers exist, and they were meant to save the world. It was all real.

They had to stop the explosion. The cheerleader was proof of Isaac's prophetic abilities, and Hiro himself had seen it happen. They had to change the future and save the world from a terrible fate. He admits that it seems too big for him to defeat, and Nathan dares to tell him that he can't and won't. But Peter knows the truth. Even if he fears failure, it is his destiny, and he must do it, or the world... will perish.

_Dreaming about Providence  
_

_And whether mice or men have second tries  
_

_Maybe we've been living with our eyes half open  
_

_Maybe we're bent and broken, broken_

"I explode! I wipe out this whole city! You, Nathan, EVERYBODY!"

When he finally realizes that it is he who causes the explosion, Peter is horrified. After all he had been through, the person he was meant to stop was himself. Was he the villain? Why would he explode? How would he stop himself? For all his good intentions, would he still cause this mass destruction?

It wasn't supposed to be this way. He was supposed to make a difference in the world, to help people, not to destroy them. How could this be his destiny? His mother, his brother, they both expected him to go 'kaboom' in the middle of New York. His own mother had plotted against him, again expecting him to help Nathan gain power. Even if it meant that he'd died along with hundreds of others. They told him it was no use fighting, he couldn't stop it. He could not accept that. There had to be another answer.

_We want more than this world's got to offer  
_

_We want more than this world's got to offer  
_

_We want more than the wars of our fathers  
_

_And everything inside screams for second life, yeah_

"The future isn't written in stone. There is another way and you know it Peter."

"I can't let you die!"

"And I can't let everyone else. You saved the cheerleader so that we could save the world."

"I love you, Nathan."

"I love you too. You ready?"

He realized that this was his destiny. He had saved the cheerleader, saved the world. It was never about the explosion. It was about changing the face of evil so that evil could be stopped. Now, it was up to someone else to stop him from destroying the world, from killing so many people. His part was over. It was all over. He was meant to die here and now from an explosion caused by a power absorbed and too little control. But with Nathan's help, they would be able to prevent the deaths of thousands of people, by sacrificing just two.

It was their destiny. They weren't meant to live.

_We were meant to live for so much more  
_

_Have we lost ourselves?  
_

_We were meant to live for so much more  
_

_Have we lost ourselves?  
_

_We were meant to live for so much more  
_

_Have we lost ourselves?  
_

_We were meant to live  
_

_We were meant to live_


End file.
